In early childhood education, assessment means watching children closely, writing down what they actually do and say, and using that evidence to plan what comes next. It does not mean tests, marks or class rankings. Good preschools record observation notes, collect samples of children's work and photographs of their projects, keep an individual development record for each child, and talk with families about progress measured against the child's own earlier self. The purpose is to teach each child better, not to sort children.
This article sets out why scores do not fit children under six, what teachers record instead, how that record turns into daily planning, and how the approach works inside the Global Nexus curriculum. It is written for teachers, curriculum leads and school leaders, and for parents who want to understand why their child's preschool does not send home a report card with numbers on it. The other articles in this category go deeper into each tool: observation notes, learning stories, pedagogical documentation, portfolios and development records.
Why scores do not fit children under six
Young children are poor test-takers for reasons that have nothing to do with what they know. A three-year-old may answer a question on Monday and ignore the same question on Tuesday because she is tired, because the adult is unfamiliar, or because the blocks across the room are more interesting. Language, attention and willingness to perform on request are all still developing, so a test result often measures the testing situation as much as the child. The United States National Research Council made this point at length in its 2008 report Early Childhood Assessment: Why, What, and How, which warned that results for young children are less stable than for older pupils and should be used with great care.
Development in the early years is also uneven by nature. A child can be months ahead in spoken language and months behind in fine motor control, and both can be perfectly ordinary. A single number flattens that unevenness into something that looks precise but tells a teacher very little about what to do tomorrow. Worse, numbers invite comparison. Once a child has a score, adults start to rank, and children quickly learn where they sit in the ranking.
There is a cost to that. Children who believe they are bad at something at four tend to avoid it at five, which is exactly when they most need practice. For this reason the Global Nexus curriculum, like many early-years frameworks around the world, does not give children scores or positions in a class, and does not use league tables, star charts for academic work or public comparisons of any kind.
What assessment means in an early-years setting
Removing scores does not remove assessment. It changes what assessment is for. In a preschool, assessment has four honest purposes. The first and most important is planning: teachers need to know what a child is curious about, what she can already do and what she is ready to try, so that the next activity meets her where she is. The second is noticing concerns early, so that a child who may need extra support is not overlooked for a year. The third is communication with families, who deserve a clear, specific picture of how their child is growing. The fourth is reviewing the programme itself: if a whole group is not engaging with a theme, the problem is usually the theme, not the children.
Each purpose needs evidence, and the evidence comes mainly from watching children in ordinary activity rather than in special assessment sessions. England's statutory Early Years Foundation Stage framework puts this plainly: assessment should not involve long breaks from interacting with children or excessive paperwork. That principle is worth taking seriously anywhere. A teacher who spends twenty minutes filling in a checklist while the class waits has gathered less useful information than one who spent the same time on the floor with three children, then wrote four careful sentences afterwards.
Assessment of this kind is formative. It looks forward, asking what this child needs next, rather than backward, asking how well this child did. The difference sounds small but it shapes everything: the language teachers use, the way they talk with parents, and how children come to see themselves as learners.
The main tools and what each one is for
Early-years teams usually work with a small set of tools. None is enough on its own, and none needs to be elaborate. The table summarises the ones used most often, including in Global Nexus classrooms.
| Tool | What it captures | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Observation note | A short, factual record of what a child did or said in a specific moment | Several per child each week, written during or just after the activity |
| Learning story | A narrative of a significant learning episode, with the teacher's reading of it and a next step | A few per child each term, often shared with the family |
| Pedagogical documentation | Photographs, transcripts of talk and children's work arranged to show how a group's thinking developed | During and after projects, displayed and revisited with children |
| Work samples | Drawings, mark-making, constructions, recordings of talk in both languages | Collected across the year to show change over time |
| Portfolio | A curated collection of the above for one child, including the child's own choices | Built over the year, reviewed with child and family |
| Individual development record | A summary of progress across the six dimensions and the national programme goals | Updated at the end of each theme or term |
The tools sit in layers. Observation notes are the raw material. Learning stories and documentation interpret that material. Portfolios and development records gather it into something a family, a new teacher or a school leader can read in ten minutes.
From observation to planning: notice, recognise, respond
New Zealand researchers Bronwen Cowie and Margaret Carr described good assessment in three verbs: noticing, recognising and responding. Teachers notice a great deal in any day. They recognise some of it as learning that matters. They respond to some of that by changing what they offer the child. The cycle is useful because it shows where assessment usually breaks down. Teachers rarely fail to notice; they fail to write down what they noticed, or they write it down and never act on it.
In practice the cycle looks modest. A teacher notices that a four-year-old has spent three mornings sorting leaves by size. She recognises a growing interest in comparison and order, which touches the thinking dimension and early mathematics. She responds by adding a balance scale and some seed pods to the nature table, and by asking the child, in English this time, which pod she thinks is heaviest. Next week she watches what happens. That sequence, recorded in two or three short notes, is assessment.
Weekly team planning is where the cycle closes. When the Vietnamese and international teachers of a class sit down together, they bring their notes, share what they saw, and adjust the following week's plan for the group and for particular children. A plan that never changes in response to observation is a sign that observation has become a paperwork exercise.
What families receive instead of a report card
Parents who grew up with marks sometimes find the absence of scores unsettling at first. The answer is not to hide information from them but to give them better information. Instead of a number for language, a family might receive a short account of how their son has started to retell stories in English using phrases from the class book, alongside a photograph of him acting out the story with puppets and a note on what the teachers will try next. That tells parents far more than a grade, and it gives them something to talk about at home.
Most schools that assess without scores share progress in three ways: informal conversations at drop-off and pick-up, regular sharing of observations and photographs, and a fuller conversation once or twice a year built around the child's portfolio and development record. In a bilingual school, those conversations should happen in the language the family is most comfortable with, and the written record should be available in that language as well.
Good sharing also runs in both directions. Families see their children in settings the school never sees: at the market, with grandparents, on a long weekend in another city. A parent who mentions that her daughter has started counting the steps up to their apartment in English has handed the teacher a useful observation. Schools that invite this kind of contribution, and record it alongside their own notes, end up with a fuller and fairer picture of each child.
What families do not receive is a comparison with other children. Teachers may explain, when it is useful, that a skill typically emerges within a wide age range, and where their child currently sits within that range. They do not say that a child is third in the class at counting, because there is no such list.
How this works in the Global Nexus curriculum
Global Nexus organises its observation around six dimensions of development: language, emotion, life skills, independence, creativity and thinking. Teachers file their notes and samples under these dimensions, which keeps attention balanced. A child who talks fluently but struggles to manage frustration should not be described only by her vocabulary, and the six headings make that kind of lopsided picture harder to produce.
Underneath the six dimensions sits Vietnam's national preschool programme, issued by the Ministry of Education and Training, which every licensed preschool must deliver. The national programme already asks teachers to evaluate children through everyday observation, conversation, simple situations and the analysis of children's products, both day by day and at the end of each stage, and it does not use marks. Global Nexus keeps that requirement and adds a richer layer of documentation on top: learning stories, project documentation and a portfolio for each child.
Two rules run through the whole system. Children are never given scores, and children are never ranked or compared with one another, in writing or in conversation. Progress is always described against the child's own earlier self, and every description ends with what the adults will do next.
Three common misunderstandings
"No scores means no standards." The opposite is closer to the truth. Writing a precise, accurate observation is harder than ticking a box, and a development record that must describe a child in specific terms across six dimensions demands more of the teacher than a percentage does. Standards apply to the quality of teaching and of the evidence, not to a number pinned on the child.
"Observation is just opinion." Poor observation is opinion. Good observation separates what was seen and heard from what the teacher thinks it means, and it is checked against other notes, other adults and the child's own work over time. A pattern that appears in five notes written by two teachers across a month is evidence, not a hunch.
"Teachers do not have time for this." Teachers do not have time for elaborate paperwork, which is why the tools should be light. A few sentences written in the moment, a photograph taken with a purpose, and a weekly conversation between co-teachers are enough to run the cycle well. Time spent recording should always be less than time spent with children.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
Do children in a no-scores preschool ever get assessed formally?
They are assessed continuously, but not through tests. Teachers observe, collect work samples and update a development record at the end of each theme or term. Specialist screening is used only when a concern needs a closer look, and always with the family's agreement.
How will parents know whether their child is on track?
Teachers share specific observations, photographs and work samples, and explain what the child can do now compared with a few months ago. Where it helps, they also describe the usual age range for a skill and where the child currently sits within it, without comparing children.
Is assessment without scores compatible with Vietnam's national programme?
Yes. The national preschool programme itself asks teachers to evaluate children through observation, conversation, simple situations and analysis of their products, daily and at the end of each stage. It does not use marks for preschool children.
What happens to the observations once they are written?
They feed weekly planning, where co-teachers adjust activities for the group and for individual children. Selected notes and samples go into the child's portfolio, and patterns across many notes inform the development record shared with the family.
Why not use a simple checklist of milestones instead?
Checklists can be a useful reminder of what to look for, but they record only whether a skill appeared, not how, when or with what support. Observation notes capture the context that teachers need to plan the next step, so checklists work best as a background aid.
Does Global Nexus ever rank children for awards or competitions?
No. The curriculum does not rank children, publish comparisons or use academic league tables. Children's efforts and ideas are celebrated individually and as a group, but never by placing one child above another.